Custos Vitae
by IvyCresent
Summary: Voldemort has captured Harry Potter. But that doesn't really matter because Harry is dying anyways and his friends will be safe.


Harry Potter reread the passage for the tenth time, "One of the main reasons for Herpo the Foul's success as a Dark Lord was his utilization of various strengthening and enhanced healing rituals along with the Custos Vitae ritual, which guarantees protection for the recipient at the expense of a willing sacrifice, and Horcruxes which split the soul to bind one to the earth. These precautions made him extremely hard to kill securing his place as one of the most fearsome dark lords in history," Harry shut the book looked with dread to the history essay due tomorrow. Couldn't he just not do it? Binns probably wouldn't notice anyways, but Hermione would. Even when he had to worry about Voldemort, teaching a third of the school defense because of the toad, his horrible Occlumency lessons, he still had to do all his schoolwork or suffer Hermione's disapproval for weeks.

Fifth year was a mess.

— — — — —

Sirius was dead. Sirius was dead and it was all his fault. It hurt more then Voldemort's crucios last year, more then Cedric's death last year, more then the steady ache at his lack of parents. Oh Merlin, all his friends would die trying to protect him and he would be left with nothing but guilt and pain. It would be worse then death. And why? it was insane that he was deemed more valuable like he might actually be able to defeat Voldemort. Because of some stupid ambiguous prophecy? Voldemort had more power, experience and cunning. He couldn't match that so he would die running and his friends would die coming to his rescue.

Then an idea popped into his head, an unwelcome dangerous idea. Everyone would call him crazy; tell him that it was stupid and not worth it. He told himself that it was crazy and told himself he shouldn't even consider it. That night he grabbed his cloak and made his way to the restricted section with a nervous knot in his stomach.

— — — —

"The Custos Vitae ritual is class SS dark magic and will earn anyone involved a lifetime sentence to Azkaban. It is documented here for purely academic purposes, and should not be attempted under any circumstance.

Custos Vitae is a ritual that allows the caster to sacrifice their life in order to offer unconditional protection to a recipient of their choice. The ritual requires an underage wizard or witch to willingly sacrifice their life. Once preformed the caster will live one to two more years depending on the strength of the caster's magic. Provided the caster does not die of other causes before the ritual kills them the person receiving the ritual will be rendered effectively immortal for one hundred years past the day they would have died. It is also possible for the caster protect multiple recipients but the years would be divided between the casters recipients. For example if the caster incorporates three recipients into the ritual each will receive thirty three years of protection.

Unlike most rituals the Custos Vitae ritual is fairly easy to preform. The caster must first gather an ounce of their blood each day for one week in a stone bowl. After the seventh day a single drop of unicorn blood and one hair from the recipient(s) must be added to the mixture. A common variation on the ritual was to use an excess of one fluid ounce of a willing unicorn's blood collected by the caster. This this substitution makes it impossible for anything but the ritual to kill the caster but will also increase the severity of side effects the caster will experience. Next the mixture must be left outside under a full moon. Finally the caster must drink the mixture at sunrise with the intent to sacrifice their life of their own free will.

Over the next two years the casters magic will become less powerful and erratic. After three to four months the caster will no longer to preform high level magic like the Patronus charm, elemental magic and the Animagus transformation. Half a year after the ritual the caster will no longer be able to learn new magic and should the caster still be alive a year after the ritual they will barely be able to produce basic spells. In addition to losing their magic the caster will suffer physical symptoms that vary from caster to caster but typically include: frequent fevers, fatigue, migraines, random burning sensations, coughing up blood and vomiting. In many cases the caster also becomes apathetic after preforming the ritual.

Upon the casters death the recipient(s) will receive protection. The magic lies dormant and and does not effect the recipient at all until a event that would have killed recipient occurs. After the magic activates the recipient will be healed to a reasonable state whenever killed for the duration that the protection is active."

Harry closed the book and bolted out of the library, it was a stupid idea.

— — — —

Harry cut the top of his wrist and winced as the blood flowed into an appropriately sized potions vial. The blood flowed freely out of him; he didn't even feel the flow. The blood was dark and the action was perverse. The vial was full now, he whispered a quick healing spell and the wounded vanished. He poured the vial into the stone bowl. That was his second day.

He had the names. Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny Luna, Fred and George. And then there was Dumbledore, forget the prophecy if anyone would be able to vanquish Voldemort it would be Dumbledore. It would be a little over fourteen years to guarantee his friends lived through the war and that the light had the best chance of winning.

— — — —

There were two unicorns standing before him cautiously. When he had went into the forbidden Forrest looking for unicorns he hadn't actually expected to find one, let alone two in the frist hour of searching. They were hesitant.

"Erm...hi unicorn. I was wondering if I could use a little of your blood?" He said feeling like a complete idiot. "I need it to protect my friends. I'm always leading them into dangerous situations because someone powerful is trying to kill me. And my friends are always there for me putting themselves in danger. I couldn't bear to have one of them die because of me. So I really hope one of you will give a little blood, to protect them." He said babbling.

The unicorns shared a look like they had actually understood him. Then one approached.

He looked in wonder at it "Thanks" he said and fumbled with the knife. The unicorn didn't bolt when he pulled it out. It didn't move when he made a shallow incision on the unicorn's shoulder. Finally when he had enough he pulled the stone bowl back. As soon as he whispered the healing spell the unicorns galloped off leaving him there with the complete ritual mixture. Oh Merlin he really was going to do this. Like actually go through with it. The full moon was tomorrow night.

— — — — —

He waited by the potion all night. Sitting there in his invisibility cloak in the middle of the forbidden forest. Fretting and doubting his choice. But in the end when the sun rose, with shaking hands he grabbed mixture and gulped it down while thinking about how he was doing this on his own free will and how he wanted to protect his friends even at the cost of his own life.

(HP)(HP)(HP)

This is posted on Archive of Our Own and has _many_ more chapters in it, this story also gets reasonably smutty so I will stop posting it here once it reaches that point so if you enjoy this story read it on Arcive of our own (the title is the same and my user name is Silver_Ivy)


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